Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Far be it from us to stir up trouble, but we've been wondering of late whether Padma Lakshmi might not have a colorable lawsuit against Mariah Carey, and the producers of Mariah's cinematic magnum opus, Glitter.

All of us, possums, suffered from Padma's odd vocal inflections and seeming befuddlement and watery moves. The more uncharitable attributed all of this to herbal essences, but we are starting to believe there may be another, better, explanation.

Of course, there might be a problem with the statute of limitations, and workers' compensation laws, and oh, dunno, medical evidence, but we are furiously theorizing that Padma's problems may stem from her work on Glitter, where she played Mariah's arch-rival, Sylk (that's her in the photograph, looking more lively than we've ever seen her).

You're probably too young to remember, possums, how John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorehead died from cancer after working on a film shot in Utah in a location downwind from where the military had tested several atom bombs. (In fact, out of 220 people who worked on the film, at least 90 died of cancer.)

Might not something similar have happened to our Padma on the set of Glitter? Just look at the photograph, and at the trailer for the film (sorry, possums, we couldn't bring ourselves actually to watch the movie). Padma appears about 31 seconds into the affair, and her appearance culminates three seconds later, in a cloud of fur and feathers, her hands on her hips, her bazooms out to here. You'll know what we mean.

Perhaps the surfeit of sequins and feathers did her in; a stray sequin or a renegade bit of marabou up her nose, into her brain and, lodged there, affects her speech patterns and coordination. The vivacious, bitchy, over-the-top, flamboyant, to-die-for Padma was replaced by a seemingly lobotomized femmebot. And look at what happened to Mariah Carey after Glitter: a meltdown on MTV'sTRL, trying to strip in public and live on-air. (Come to think of it, doesn't that resemble what Padma was trying to do with her outfits on Top Chef?) So if you have any medical expertise, please write in and let us know whether we might be on the right track.